(11-12-2012 01:29 PM)nach_in Wrote: If everyone just start to steal candy from stores instead of buying them, then something must be changed to fix the situation, making more restrictive laws usually don't fix such situations, so the best course of action is to find a way to make laws in a way that people respect them, leaving only a small amount of fringe cases for the judiciary system to solve.

No, absolutely not.

The solution is to change the way candy is sold. The law against stealing it is in no need of change.

Technology has created the opportunity for a problem with copyright enforcement, technology is likely the way to solve it. There is no compelling reason to change the law.

Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.

(11-12-2012 01:29 PM)nach_in Wrote: If everyone just start to steal candy from stores instead of buying them, then something must be changed to fix the situation, making more restrictive laws usually don't fix such situations, so the best course of action is to find a way to make laws in a way that people respect them, leaving only a small amount of fringe cases for the judiciary system to solve.

No, absolutely not.

The solution is to change the way candy is sold. The law against stealing it is in no need of change.

Technology has created the opportunity for a problem with copyright enforcement, technology is likely the way to solve it. There is no compelling reason to change the law.

It seems to me that you assume that the way the candy is sold has nothing to do with the law, I can't think of any human activity that is not touched by some law.
As I said, more restrictive laws, i.e. changing the law against stealing, is not usually a good answer, and it seems we can agree on that.
When I say we have to change the laws in a way people respect them, I'm talking about to all the other laws around selling candy, so we change the way candy is sold.

Hell yes they are picking and choosing where and how to apply the law. Look at youtube for example. They have a fair use policy in place (I believe it is law as well), however they don't investigate false flagging. They just remove or edit your video or ban you. If it bothers people enough to cause false flagging then they use copyright laws to remove the content, even if they apply the law incorrectly.

Really? YouTube removes a flagged video without due process in a court of law, and that's "picking and choosing"?

Of course not, don't be peckish.

YouTube doesn't have the legal staff, and is extremely disinclined to hire one and pay the massive salaries of a large legal staff, to review every flagged video for actual copyright infractions. If they ignore reported copyright infractions, they might get sued for bajillions of bucks, so they cannot afford to make that mistake, and they refuse to afford proper legal processing of every flag, millions of flags, so they simply act on all the flags, probably with some kind of filter to try to minimize repeat flagging from one IP address and maybe other checks and balances to limit the chance that they're removing legitimate videos falsely flagged. It's probably all automated, or mostly so, and clearly erroring on the side of caution (that being the side that doesn't cost YouTube any money in courts).

"Whores perform the same function as priests, but far more thoroughly." - Robert A. Heinlein

(13-12-2012 01:45 AM)Birdguy1979 Wrote: Hell yes they are picking and choosing where and how to apply the law. Look at youtube for example. They have a fair use policy in place (I believe it is law as well), however they don't investigate false flagging. They just remove or edit your video or ban you. If it bothers people enough to cause false flagging then they use copyright laws to remove the content, even if they apply the law incorrectly.

You are conflating law and policy. What Youtube does is their policy.

Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.

(10-12-2012 10:30 PM)nach_in Wrote: I think copyright is one of the most rotten parts of our current system, the idea that immaterial things can be appropriated in the same way material things are is just absurd.
I understand the economic reasons behind it, but they fail to convince me. And they push it more and more because lately this goods are gaining a lot of value (with the internetz and stuff).

In any case I think intellectual property must be revised, preferably sooner than later.

Copyright protects the ownership of something created by a person's labor. What is your problem with that?

How it is used in order to maintain complete and utter control over a generic product, and if someone creates something remotely similar, they are under the pressure of copyright laws.

For example, Bethesda's childish fight over Mojang's game called "Scrolls". Really? Fair copyright grounds to sue because it has the word "Scrolls" in it? Or the endless lawsuits between Apple and its rival companies, not in an effort to actually protect anything they make, but to drain their opponents of money. Copyright laws may have been created with that intent, but they are clearly abused.

(10-12-2012 10:45 PM)Chas Wrote: Copyright protects the ownership of something created by a person's labor. What is your problem with that?

How it is used in order to maintain complete and utter control over a generic product, and if someone creates something remotely similar, they are under the pressure of copyright laws.

For example, Bethesda's childish fight over Mojang's game called "Scrolls". Really? Fair copyright grounds to sue because it has the word "Scrolls" in it? Or the endless lawsuits between Apple and its rival companies, not in an effort to actually protect anything they make, but to drain their opponents of money. Copyright laws may have been created with that intent, but they are clearly abused.

It is not used to create control over a 'generic product' and your example doesn't address that.

The point of law in question in that case is that of consumer confusion by similar naming. It is the name, not the content.

The examples you and others bring up are examples of abuse of a system. The system is necessary and just.

Skepticism is not a position; it is an approach to claims.
Science is not a subject, but a method.